Monday 27 Feb model and plant palette

Today was a good day…

Started with taking my model at 1:500 into class in bits – not great, but I figured it was better to be there on time and not miss anything important then I could add the bits into place as the day went on. Added my walls and buildings and felt pleased that I was making progress – this task really made me feel like I should be doing a model every time I design – for me it just shows exactly what works and what doesn’t and seeing the shadows from my walls really helped to give my design the depth that I struggled to capture on my plan (having added no shadows as I just didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing) Julia said my model was extremely neat – I decided to take this as a compliment! Haha. Nothing in my life has ever been described as neat before that’s for sure!

So note to self – start with a model pretty early on! The next week I began a quick 1:200 model to help me make some decisions. Which it really did in terms of sight lines around buildings and towards structures etc.

Plant palette – I had done this but didn’t pin up as it felt a bit blah. Spent ages googling images to go with my list of supposed coastal plants gathered from Julia’s emails, RHS and books I have. Slow process and it was only after about 15 images I finally felt I was getting somewhere in terms of finding things I may want to use.

Had a eureka moment Saturday morning and suddenly decided on a planting theme (or narrative as Julia said today) for my ‘woodland” area – had been reading a girly trashy fashion mag and somebody or other had just done “enchanted” on the catwalk and I thought – that’s what I need: a whimsical, enchanted forest feel, to go with the playful concept. So nice upright trees (populous tremula) with cloud form shapes of phillyrea. So at least I felt I was getting the planting scheme cemented.

Ended the day on Monday with a tired presentation of my exhibition for our marketing module – such a shame we have this on Monday after a long day on masterplanning as none of us feel we are giving it the attention it deserves, but we are making the best of it I think.